Is it time for a new video card

[darkataxia]

I just recently got a monitor and I noticed that when I'm in the more populated zones such as Whitegate or Jeuno that it takes a few min for all the people to show up? Is that natural and would a better faster video card improve that big time? Sometimes it takes 2 to 3 min (sometimes more) for friends to appear.... I found a ATI Radeon 9800 Pro w/128mb on ebay for about $50 is that a decent card?

My Current video card is Nvidia Mx440

here is my video card
http://cgi.ebay.com/nVidia-MX440-12...804033019QQcategoryZ40161QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Here is what I'm considering
http://cgi.ebay.com/ATI-RADEON-9800...805199133QQcategoryZ40158QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

[Sculli]

The Radeon will be somewhat of an improvement, basically any DirectX 9 card will be better than what you have now.

Chances are that you would also get quite a boost from adding more RAM to your machine.

 

[Alerith]

Also, ingame, open the main menu and push left (so that the menu with macros, bazzar etc. is showing.)

There should be a Configuration option. In this option there is some options. One of these options is misc. and misc.2

In one of these is a "Maximum Displayed Character Models" bar. This bar gauges how many character models (Players, NPC, Monsters) are displayed on your screen at one time.

I dont know if this option is set to maximum by default, but give it a look.

 

[darkataxia]

The Radeon will be somewhat of an improvement, basically any DirectX 9 card will be better than what you have now.

Chances are that you would also get quite a boost from adding more RAM to your machine.

it wasn't so bad until I got the new monitor and had to change the resolution and now it takes forever for other players characters to appear in the very populated zones...
I did consider uping the amount of Ram in the machine also...Can someone recommend a decent video card around $100

 

[nofriends]

FFXI is very heavily CPU dependant as its a PS2 port. You can upgrade your video card and it will help things look pretty running at higher resolutions, but the FPS cap for the game is still set at 30. I wish the PC and 360 users could get an upgraded engine to let us take advantage of what an up to date system can do.

I have a 7800GTX running at 1280x1024 with a 1280x1280 background and my fps will still drop in heavily crowded areas. I upgraded from a 9800 Pro, and yes it will work well, but keep in mind that by modern standards, its a lower end card. It will play FFXI just fine at any of the native resolutions, but if you start adding AA, AF and tweaking the background resolutions in the registry, it will get slow.

As for the amount of people showing up on your screen... That will always take time to load. The server cannot dump all the info to your computer about everybody in the zone and what they are wearing, it would cause too much strain on them. That is why they appear slowly over time, the server is slowly feeding you the model information for each character so the servers remain stable. Can you imagine the lag if the server were to send the data for 700 people to your computer at once when you zoned into Whitegate?

 

[nofriends]

it wasn't so bad until I got the new monitor and had to change the resolution and now it takes forever for other players characters to appear in the very populated zones...
I did consider uping the amount of Ram in the machine also...Can someone recommend a decent video card around $100

If you can get a 9800 Pro for $50 then I'd go with that. Its a very good card for the money, and will let play more games other then FFXI.

 

[darkataxia]

If you can get a 9800 Pro for $50 then I'd go with that. Its a very good card for the money, and will let play more games other then FFXI.

K thanks

 

[Raziella]

Do yourself a favor and don't buy vid cards on ebay. Go to http://www.newegg.com/ instead. Your chances of getting a defective card are relatively high and newegg has a fantastic return and RMA policy if you get screwed. I build machines all the time and they're the best place that I've ever dealt with, hands down! Very good prices too.

 

[nofriends]

www.newegg.com

www.zipzoomfly.com

www.tigerdirect.com

Are all good places to buy parts from. Check out where you are located compared to them, as ordering from the same state as them will most likely cause you to pay sales tax. I live about 45 mins away from the newegg wherehouse, so I usually get anything I order within 2 business days, so I dont mind paying the sales tax, but if you are looking to save some money, check out the tax rates and locations before ordering.

 

[darkataxia]

Do yourself a favor and don't buy vid cards on ebay. Go to http://www.newegg.com/ instead. Your chances of getting a defective card are relatively high and newegg has a fantastic return and RMA policy if you get screwed. I build machines all the time and they're the best place that I've ever dealt with, hands down! Very good prices too.

Thanks for the advice I am always a little weary about buying off ebay, especially video cards and stuff

 

[Sculli]

Meh, ebay angst.
Look for those sellers who have a DOA warranty and you will be fine. Why buy new if you can save a bundle. Also check out hardforum.com, they have a trade section where you can get great deals of stuff that works for sure.

 

[CmdrFly]

I have a 7800GTX running at 1280x1024 with a 1280x1280 background and my fps will still drop in heavily crowded areas.

This is something a computer nerd like myself should really know, but I'm useless and I dont. So I ask:

The setting: 1920x1200, 2048x2048 textures, extended draw distance (reg value 4 or 5 I think), 4x AF, 16x AA.
The system: 256mb X800 GTO2, Athlon XP 3200, 1024 physical mem (non dual-channel, mismatched sticks, stock timings).

I get disgusting framerates when weather effects are turned on, or in some cases even when only high-res shadows are turned on. Where's my bottleneck? CPU? Seeing as the weather is (seemingly) software rendered, I could see that neck being CPU... but the shadows are dynamic and hardware rendered, so why do I get slowdowns when I turn em up?

I can't see an X800 being brought to it's knees by some measly shadows, when it can maintain 30+ fps in Half-Life 2 at 1920x1200 with 4x and 16x on.

This is all running with the lowest possible # of characters displayed at once.

 

[nofriends]

This is something a computer nerd like myself should really know, but I'm useless and I dont. So I ask:

The setting: 1920x1200, 2048x2048 textures, extended draw distance (reg value 4 or 5 I think), 4x AF, 16x AA.
The system: 256mb X800 GTO2, Athlon XP 3200, 1024 physical mem (non dual-channel, mismatched sticks, stock timings).

I get disgusting framerates when weather effects are turned on, or in some cases even when only high-res shadows are turned on. Where's my bottleneck? CPU? Seeing as the weather is (seemingly) software rendered, I could see that neck being CPU... but the shadows are dynamic and hardware rendered, so why do I get slowdowns when I turn em up?

I can't see an X800 being brought to it's knees by some measly shadows, when it can maintain 30+ fps in Half-Life 2 at 1920x1200 with 4x and 16x on.

This is all running with the lowest possible # of characters displayed at once.

Its the shitty engine. You have to remember this game was designed for PS2's hardware limitations. I can run Far Cry and Oblivion on their max settings and my computer doesnt break a sweat, but its the limitations of the FFXI engine that doesnt allow it to make full use of modern CPU's and GPU's.

Im running:

Athlon 64 3700+ OC'd to 2.7ghz
2GB RAM
7800GTX OC'd
etc..

I dont set my resolutions too high, only 1280x1280 overlay and background with 2x AA and AF set on the hardware level, and also using the FFXI Element tools to smooth it out even more. I play with high shadows and weather turned off (just because it annoys me in some zones) and it still brings my FPS down sometimes in populated areas.

 

[nofriends]

Some pics for reference.. Here is what FFXI looks like on my comp, and here is what COD2 looks like maxed out on the same system (Still at 60fps the entire time).

As you can see, a properly designed engine can put my computer to much better use then the FFXI engine.

 

[Raziella]

This is something a computer nerd like myself should really know, but I'm useless and I dont. So I ask:

The setting: 1920x1200, 2048x2048 textures, extended draw distance (reg value 4 or 5 I think), 4x AF, 16x AA.
The system: 256mb X800 GTO2, Athlon XP 3200, 1024 physical mem (non dual-channel, mismatched sticks, stock timings).

I get disgusting framerates when weather effects are turned on, or in some cases even when only high-res shadows are turned on. Where's my bottleneck? CPU? Seeing as the weather is (seemingly) software rendered, I could see that neck being CPU... but the shadows are dynamic and hardware rendered, so why do I get slowdowns when I turn em up?

I can't see an X800 being brought to it's knees by some measly shadows, when it can maintain 30+ fps in Half-Life 2 at 1920x1200 with 4x and 16x on.

This is all running with the lowest possible # of characters displayed at once.

I've actually been doing a lot of reading in dev and mod forums about this (I'm a wanna-be graphics developer stuck working as a web developer). Apparently the PC version of FF is very CPU and system memory heavy because the development methodology for consoles almost requires it. In addition to that, they wrote just about everything that's time-sensitive based on the game's frame-rate. Which is why you can't run the game above 30fps without causing major timing bugs. Square doesn't quite know how to pass the majority of their operations onto the GPU for better performance either. In short... terrible port.

I had the same problem with a cel-shaded game a friend and I were working on. We wrote all of our translation/transformation matrix operations and lighting calculations in software (which made it very CPU heavy) and the game struggles on system with anything lower than a TNT2 Pro. Which is sad because it sorely lacks complexity. In the end we probably should have passed more to the OpenGL API and let the hardware do the work, but back then, we didn't know any better. I would kind of expect SE to have done their homework and know better... :-/


So anyway, what are the clock speeds on your system memory and your front-side bus? Your memory size should be fine, but from what I've been reading, a lot of people have had luck maximizing their mem speed and their front-side bus. Dual Channel support has been known to help too.

Also, I noticed you have 16xAA turned on. Since FF doesn't have AA management, I'm guessing that you turned it on through the vid-card control panel. The problem here is AA is calculated on the card but the majority of the graphics are calculated on the processor. So there is probably a bottleneck between that and when the scene is finally handed to the vid card for rendering. In short: unorthadox rendering methods might be slowing down AA calculations since they are expensive on the GPU.

Not to mention on top of all of that, FF has been known to have driver dependency issues (I'm an nvidia guy, so I'm not sure if this applies to ATI as well).

I hope this information helps. I wouldn't feel too bad, though. I just upgraded to a 939 pin Athlon64 setup w/ dual channel kingston HyperX memory (all 400mhz bus speeds) and a 7800GT, but I still get frame rates of <30 and rate drops in certain places. However, I can run Oblivion, Quake4, and Doom3 at fantastic framerates with visuals turned up. It's disheartening. :-/

 

[CmdrFly]

Damnit Raz, I just want to do you all night long. I don't even know why, I simply must hump you.

So anyway, what are the clock speeds on your system memory and your front-side bus? Your memory size should be fine, but from what I've been reading, a lot of people have had luck maximizing their mem speed and their front-side bus. Dual Channel support has been known to help too.

FSB is atttt.... durrr. Barton core, 166 base so 333ddr I believe. It's pretty suck. Memory clock runs at the same; I believe the ram supports 400 but I toned it down to 333 to match the CPU and reduce sync issues between the two.

Also, I noticed you have 16xAA turned on. Since FF doesn't have AA management, I'm guessing that you turned it on through the vid-card control panel. The problem here is AA is calculated on the card but the majority of the graphics are calculated on the processor. So there is probably a bottleneck between that and when the scene is finally handed to the vid card for rendering. In short: unorthadox rendering methods might be slowing down AA calculations since they are expensive on the GPU.

Yes, it was enabled in the Catalyst Control Panel. I must honestly say that I noticed a difference turning AA on after increasing FFXI's texture res to 2048²; though AF I have noticed nothing. Should I try turning AA off?

I hope this information helps. I wouldn't feel too bad, though. I just upgraded to a 939 pin Athlon64 setup w/ dual channel kingston HyperX memory (all 400mhz bus speeds) and a 7800GT, but I still get frame rates of <30 and rate drops in certain places. However, I can run Oblivion, Quake4, and Doom3 at fantastic framerates with visuals turned up. It's disheartening. :-/

Q4 I can do @ max settings, Doom3 I can't. Completely blows my mind seeing as they're based on the same engine, but I suppose it's moreso the environments and D3's reliance on dynamics more than Q4 to create the game's atmosphere.

 

[Raziella]

Damnit Raz, I just want to do you all night long. I don't even know why, I simply must hump you.

Haha, thanks, I think. lol

FSB is atttt.... durrr. Barton core, 166 base so 333ddr I believe. It's pretty suck. Memory clock runs at the same; I believe the ram supports 400 but I toned it down to 333 to match the CPU and reduce sync issues between the two.

Yeah, I think you're okay in the clock speed department because that's exactly how I had my old system set up and I didn't have any unusual FF problems. Heh, actually, now that I think about, I think I had a 333CPU, 400 FSB, and 266 DDR! lol

Yes, it was enabled in the Catalyst Control Panel. I must honestly say that I noticed a difference turning AA on after increasing FFXI's texture res to 2048²; though AF I have noticed nothing. Should I try turning AA off?

Couldn't hurt to give it a shot. Although, if the problem is texture related, I would think that AF would be a bigger burden because the size of the texture determines how much work the AF hardware has to do to filter it. AA, if I remember correctly, only cares about the screen resolution and gets calculated right before the scene is displayed. But there could be something there that I'm missing... I would say try turning all 3 down and slowly check one feature at a time to see what's actually causing it.

Q4 I can do @ max settings, Doom3 I can't. Completely blows my mind seeing as they're based on the same engine, but I suppose it's moreso the environments and D3's reliance on dynamics more than Q4 to create the game's atmosphere.

That is odd. Ya know what... I remember there being an issue with Doom3 on ATI drivers (oddly enough, tested on the X800). I just googled it and found that apparently, the Catalyst 4.8 drivers treate texture memory in such a way where Tri-linear filter does not occur correctly (or at all, by the looks of it) and creates very noticable differences in mip-map layers. Here's the site I found:

http://techreport.com/etc/2004q3/ati-doom3/index.x?pg=1

Also, back when I was still a student, I did PC support work for my university and I was helping out a business professor (who happened to be an FPS addict) with his Doom3 installation and I couldn't get the game to run at all on his ATI card (can't remember which one) without the fixed 4.9 drivers.

The odd behavior with Doom3 might also explain why FF is giving you grief. Since the problem indicates that the card and drivers handle textures in an odd way, you're slowdown just might be in texturing and AF.

It would be a huge pain in the ass because you run a risk of soiling your windows installation with 2 opposing drivers that like to leave residual entries in the registry...
BUT,
You could definitely figure out if it's the card by temporarily swapping in a Geforce card to see if it cleans up the problem. Although, if you can fix it through tweaking the texture settings, I would opt for that in a heartbeat. ^^b